Quite a bit has happened since the Sun and Stars Rally. Most notably, two loose rallies. The first was a one day single venue rally. A class win here
navigated by wife Jackie set the stage for the final event of the year, the
two day Winter Rally.

The Winter Rally promised something a bit different for a loose rally. It
was slated to start at night with 4 runs thru Searles and then continue on
Sunday with 4 runs thru Guinea and ending with another 4 runs thru Searles in the reverse direction to Saturday night. The car was shod with some Michelin hand-me-down tyres for this rally, but they seemed OK and were the least of my worries. Much more important was the left seat occupant, or to be more precise, the lack of one. Jackie had been conducting a training course for the past two months that was scheduled to finish....on Day two of the rally, rendering her unavailable. Brother Jonathan was some 4500 miles way and also not available. Son Dominic was under the minimum age for National rallies and we really didn't want to break our treasured tradition of being a family team.

A bit of grovelling and a few one-sided counter-intuitive arguments secured a suitable person in none other than Jonathan's wife Alecia who happened to be in Barbados at the time. A bit of hurried membership and licensing ensued and she was duly entered as my co-driver. Pace-noting was the morning of the rally and done without episode. Alecia seemed quite comfortable with the task at hand as we suited her up and checked helmet, intercom, shoes etc. On to the start then...

Sitting on the start line of the first stage with fog lights on, windows up
and an apparently penseive first-time navigator was...interesting. The good thing was that whether she read the notes correctly or not, or in German or Spanish matter little since I knew the stage quite well, it was more of how she would feel as a passenger. Well, the little red lights turned yellow and then green (as they do), and off we went. Alecia actually called the notes quite well, and had already added managed to add a few comments here and there like "faster" and "haul your ass". The fact that we caught the car that started ahead of us two corners before the finish due to a spin added some additional colour. As we passed thru the finish, I flicked off the fogs, slowed and asked Alecia how she felt about the whole co-driving thing and her first stage. Suffice it to say that there was a whole lot of un-printable stuff, but the general gist of it was "wow,that was awesome, lets do it again!". We finished the rally without incident although we did have a few Kodak moments.

We learned two valuable things in this rally. First the new front Proflex
suspension is great. Second the old rear Avo suspension is crap. We
definately need to upgrade the rear to Proflex in 2009. Also on the cards
for 2009 is to rebuild the QED engine and put it back in the car.

This rally was a fitting end to a most enjoyable year. We finished 1st in
our class, M7 with the prize being a plane ticket to England courtesy of
Championship sponsors Virgin Atlantic.

And speaking of sponsors, we could not have done what we did this year
without the assistance, encouragement and support of our sponsors:

Barry and Susan at Ravensden
James at Crane and Equipment
Mr. Jordan at Garbage Gobbler
Mark at Morris Straker
Alan at Subzero

We thank you.

The Kickastra Rally Team
 

The Rally of the Sun and Stars would be the second time running with the new
Proflex suspension on the front of the car. After a bit of consultation with
the supplier of the suspension, he suggested that we back off the rebound a
bit.  This was how the car ran for the rally. Due to work/study/time
commitments of both myself and my wife/co-driver, I ended up doing the
pace-notes by myself the weekend prior to the rally.  Again due to various
commitments  we did not get the opportunity to drive through the stages
during the week and so the first time that Jackie saw the stages was on the
start line on Saturday.  It would be the first time using the Windmill to
Lamberts stage for a few years for both of us and the first time from Sailor
Gully to Welchtown for Jackie.  There was little preparation needed for the
car leading up to the rally with just a spanner and fluid check needed.

First stage up was Windmill-Lamberts.  I thought we had done a rather slow
time but the clock reflected otherwise.  I messed up the hairpin a bit when,
after nipping the handbrake to bring the back around did not produce the
desired effect, I pulled it again and this time over-rotated and faced the
wall on the inside of the corner.  On the stage in general the back of the
car felt very loose and so we lowered the rear tyre pressure after this
stage.  The next stage felt much better.  Timewise were were right on the
heels of Josh Reid - different group and faster, but a good benchmark - and
very happy with how the car felt and handled.  Previously when taking the
flat dip in the traditional section of Sailor Gully the car would bounce a
bit after the dip, but not this time.  It felt very settled and controlled.
Likewise with the sharp dip that in this rally was taken straight at the
point where we normally turn left to finish in French village.  Each of these
stages were run three times then there was the dinner stop.  At this point we
were about 0.4 seconds adrift of Sammy Cumberbatch, a couple behind Josh and
about 24 seconds up on our group.

The night stages were now to come.  Due to a combination of problems
including crowd control and spectator vehicles coating a section of the
stage with mud only one run of the night stage from Ellesmere to Colleton
out of the four scheduled was possible.  The stage was indeed interesting
with mud at the Kendal pond corners and up the straight past the kink and
water in other areas.  The right hander into Kendal pond wasn't too bad, but
on the left hander leaving the pond I had huge understeer and resorted to
the handbrake.  If I was going to meet the wall, it would at least be
backwards however I managed to get some grip and scrabble around the corner
in rather untidy fashion.  The rest of the stage was taken with  a certain
degree of caution.  It was now on to Bridgetown for the two runs of the super
special. Again, due to circumstances consisting primarily of crowd control -
I have never seen so many people at anything in Bridgetown before - only one
untimed run for the spectators was possible.  This stage certainly has
possibilities for the future, but the planning and manpower to run it
properly would be massive.  All in all, another successful outing for the
Kickastra Rally Team.  Thanks go to our sponsors Ravensden, Crane and
Equipment, Garbage Gobbler, Morris Straker Construction and SubZero for
their continued support and making it all possible.

We had received the new Proflex front suspension the day before the Stewart Hill event and due to time constraints were unable to install it for that event.  Pickerings then would be the testing ground.

The Proflex was fitted and the steering alignment redone.  The first run at Pickerings was hairy.  The car felt very twitchy and the slightest movement of the wheel had the car all over the road.  To compound things, I overshot the left turn into Hope road and had to reverse.  I dropped the rear tyre pressures for the second run.  This felt better, but the front was still quite nervous.  Front tyre pressures were dropped for the third run along with backing off the high speed bump. The car now felt right.

The Hope road section of the stage had always been very rough and choppy with the Leda suspension, but the Proflex just smoothed it all out.  All in all, it turned out to be a very good event.  I went 3 seconds quicker than last year, was about a half second slower than Josh Reid (not in my group, but a good benchmark) after having been 3 seconds slower than him at Stewart Hill, and had great fun handbraking around the tight right after the plantation to turn onto Springhall road.  The proflex will need some more fine tuning to get it spot on, but I am very pleased with how it works.

Thanks again to our sponsors Ravensden for this very nice suspension!

Check out YouTube Video courtesy of Red265 Multimedia
 

I had little to do after Rally Barbados other than to straighten the steering arm on the left side - courtesy of the run -off at Malvern, and to replace the bolts for the outboard joint on the bottom arm. Additionally, the side skirt that had been ripped off at Dark Hole was re-fitted.

The Redland event went well - the only minor downside was the relatively small field. As for the coarse, the newly barbergreened section was not as grippy as I thought it would be,the downhill right and left has gotten bumpier than I ever remember it, and the very fast left approaching the hairpin was diabolical. Felt as though the car would jump off the road and impale itself on one of the poles on the outside of the corner. That said, the car worked fine, and the times were pretty much where I thought they would be - 1st in class and in among the P4 cars.

One thing I need to sort out for the next event is the accelerator pedal. It carries a plastic bushing either side of the pivot, and both of these had worn out. This meant that the pedal was a good inch or more away from the brake pedal and not quite close enough to heel and toe comfortably or accurately. Those spectating at Tappy Pond corner would have heard the lack of blipping or rpm under braking. Having left the middle pedal bit until quite late anyway, there wasn't enough time to wiggle my right foot to blip the throttle while still on the brake. Will get sorted for next time.

Thanks again to our sponsors Ravensden, Crane and Equipment, Garbage Gobbler, Morris Straker Construction and Subzero Services for their continued support.

Adrian Linton
 

Wife Jackie took on the left seat duties, but due to a hectic study schedule, son Dominic ended up going through the stages with me and writing the pace notes.  As it turned out, we did have enough time on the morning before the rally for Jackie to see the stages herself and to make minor amendments to the notes.  The start of the rally was a bit hectic for me since I was also one of the scrutineers, and we had 39 cars to check in an hour and a half.  Anyway, scrutineering was completed and the rally started in earnest.

The term shakedown was most apt for us since we had made a number of changes to the car from how we ran it last year and were eager to try them out. The front anti-roll bar was removed, the bump and rebound settings were changed and we were back on the Toyo RA 1 tyres after using the Toyo 888 tyres last year. The first stage was taken with a touch of caution, and felt very good. I had forgotten that the RA 1's tend to squeal like road tyres - which essentially they are. There was an annoying intermittent hesitation that occurred randomly through this stage and the following one that prompted us to change the fuel filter.

Time for SS1 wasn't bad at 2:45, but there was definite room for improvement especially as Jackie complained that it felt slow. We changed the fuel filter after SS2 but the hesitation was still there for SS3 although it was less noticeable. This time through Mrs. Navi seemed reasonably happy with the oomph, and in spite of the intercom failing just before the end of the stage we clocked a 2:40 A general check of the various sensors and connectors after this stage revealed nothing, but the hesitation went away. SS5 was taken a bit more aggressively and resulted in a big Kodak moment at the turn square right at Ashford and squeals of delight from the left seat having clocked a 2:36 SS6 was done without the use of the intercom. Not to be deterred, Mrs. Navi resorted to the age-old technique of shouting and pointing, much to my amusement. I am sure the semaphore used was invented on the spur of the moment, and as luck would have it, it was caught on in-car camera for posterity!

At the end of the first stage after the lunch stop the car died at the finish finish marshal and we had to push start it (the starter switch had packed up on SS5). On to SS8 and the car died moments before starting the stage. We pushed the car to the side, and I found that the exciter wire on the alternator had broken and hence the battery was not being charged (which would explain why it died). I made a temporary repair with the only tool we had in the car - a Gerber multitool - and we push started the car. It ran but all was not well since the charge light was still burning dimly. We had already used up a good bit of time making the repair and we opted not to do the stage and headed straight for our service crew. At that point we swapped batteries with the service pickup - a job that entailed gentle manipulation of the battery box with a large hammer and the use of a ratchet strap to secure it. This done it was off the SS 9.

The car worked well for the rest of the day, and we took to giving the car a boost from the service vehicle after each stage. We found out when we got to Bushy park that we had been lying 8th overall at the lunch stop which was quite pleasing - particularly since we had not only made a number of changes to the car, but still had in the standard engine! We ended up out of the overall placings by virtue of missing SS8, but managed to hold on to the win in M7. We now have a list of things to be done to the car to be ready for the biggest event of the year - SOL RALLY BARBADOS 2008.